I Quickly Learned Why Silicon Valley Loves To Hate MBAs

Andrew
D'Souza is the Chief Operating Officer of Top Hat
Monocle, an education software provider using mobile
technology to engage students in-class and improve
learning outcomes.

Recent Posts

When I “graduated” from the analyst program at my consulting
firm, I was faced with my first real career decision: apply for
an MBA, look for a role at a client, or try something a bit more
risky.

Through a mix of luck, laziness and process of elimination (I
really didn’t want to write the GMAT and most of my clients were
boring), I landed at a startup, taking comfort in the fact that I
had a backup plan of an MBA and career reset if things didn’t go
well.

I did my best to downplay my consulting experience and proudly
wear my Canadian engineering ring to avoid being mistaken for
one.

I often hear the question from friends, “Is an MBA really worth it?” and the more time
I spend in the startup world, the more confident I am that the
answer, for most people, is “No”.

Forbes estimates the payback period of an MBA
is 3.5 years, but their break even analysis doesn’t truly take
into account opportunity cost. Here are a few reasons why an MBA
can significantly handicap your early career progression,
particularly if you’re interested in an entrepreneurial path at
some point:

It makes you more risk-averse.It’s much
harder to take a low-paying job at a promising startup when
you’ve got $200k in debt looming over you. If you decide to
take a high-paying job for a few years to pay down your debt
and then join that startup, you might find yourself with more
financial obligations than when you just graduated (family,
car, mortgage, dependents, etc.). At the very least, you’ve got
less time to delay those obligations.

It takes you out of the running for certain
opportunities.Many hiring managers at startups
feel MBAs are overpaid and entitled, so they completely avoid
recruiting them. I know one startup exec (an HBS alum himself),
who refuses to hire an MBA until they’ve worked somewhere else
for at least 6 months and been “taken down a notch”.

You lose your uniqueness.When you graduate
from an MBA, even a top-tier MBA, on the surface you look just
like every other top-tier MBA. If you did something impressive
before business school (which you probably did if you got in),
the two years you’ve put between that and graduation make its
lustre fade. You need to work from scratch to redefine yourself
and your career.

You build a “future network,” not a “now network."Sure, you can tap a list of alumni email addresses, but
the strongest connections you make in business school are with
your classmates. Just like you, they will all be establishing
their careers after graduation and are probably 5 years away
from being truly valuable professional connections. Contrast
that to spending a couple of years in the startup world, where
you’re building real relationships with investors,
entrepreneurs and executives who are living through their
career success (and failure) with you, and bring diverse skill
sets and experiences to your network. There’s nothing like
having your friends as your investors, cofounders and business
partners.

Here’s a much better option: join a small, growing company doing
something that excites you. If the startup fails, the learning,
experience and network will only make your MBA application
stronger, and you’ve only lost a year or two. If the startup is
successful, the career growth and financial rewards will make you
completely forget about your MBA plans … at least until your
prospective classmates come asking for a job!